How Algorithms are Saving Lives

Author(s): Mazen Ahmed

Originally published on Towards AI.

AI in Early Disease Detection
Image by Author

I find it deeply fascinating how the development of mathematics, in particular algorithms, has touched almost every facet of human innovation. As we enter the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI), over very short time periods, new uses of the technology are being discovered. Early disease detection lies as one of the most promising yet potentially dangerous applications of this technology.

Algorithms can objectively and meticulously piece together pieces of information that is often missed by doctors. Over the recent years, the medical industry has leveraged this in various technologies such as brain scans, X-rays, electronic healthcare data and Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify early stage diseases and prevent misdiagnosis. By training these algorithms on large and vast amounts of labelled medical data, AI systems are able to pick up patterns, intricacies and anomalies that can elude even the most experienced healthcare professionals.

Image from The Kaggle Breast Histopathology Images dataset curated by Janowczyk and Madabhushi and Roa et al.

The added medical precision we are gaining from AI is revolutionizing the healthcare industry. In radiology, algorithms shift through thousands of images to detect minute changes that can indicate the development of cancer. In genomics, new genetic markers are being discovered… Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI